Quotes from Sydney J. Harris

Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of licence that distinguishes New York. It is, rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be Somebody.

Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.

People who won't help others in trouble "because they got into trouble through their own fault" would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning man until they learned whether he fell in through his own fault or not.

"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.

The true test of independent judgement is being able to dislike someone who admires us.

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.

Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.

We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.

Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something, without feeling the necessity to prove someone else is wrong.

Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out communication is getting through.

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'

Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it."

Knowledge fills a large brain it merely inflates a small one.

Men make counterfeit money in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.

The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones — which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.

Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.

Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.

Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.